Huanuo Heavy Duty monitor mount — Impossibly strong

If you take 30 seconds and just search “Monitor mount” on Amazon you’ll get over 20 pages of results, and with WILDLY varying levels of quality. Many come from unusual names like Suptek, Bontec, Bracwider, Sweetcrispy, and of course, Amazon Basics. If you were to do this same search, there’s a better than good chance that you won’t see those names again, replaced by a new crop of the exact same mounts, but with a new seller. There is a name that is always there, consistently comes up first, and has almost exclusively five-star reviews after tens of thousands of reviews – Huanuo. With that name it’d be easy to blend in with the others but for one thing – quality and consistency. Recently I’ve gotten to check out one of their single monitor mounts and it dawned on me…I already own one. In fact, I own several varieties of their gear. Funny how you can make a favorite without realizing it. Let’s dig into why.

First and foremost, when you open the box you’ll be greeted with a whole lot of metal – aircraft-grade aluminum to be specific. While a great many monitor mounts have resorted to cheap plastic parts, Huanuo builds their mounts to last. If you need proof, look no further than the sizes it can accommodate – 13” to 49” (yes, you read that right – 49”), and up to a STAGGERING 35.3 lbs with full motion. Normally, to get that large and heavy of a monitor mounted requires a solid immovable stand or a very expensive mounting arm. Here we have a fully articulating mount arm able to do the job.

One of the most important items on the quality checklist for a monitor mount is flexibility. It’s easy to stick a pole on a clamp and drop a monitor on it for a vertical stack, and it’s another to build a gas actuating system that can not only move, but stays when you want it to. The monitor mount I tested (a newer version of the one I already had) is the HHSS21B. It skips the long vertical arm, instead focusing on a two-stage arm and a C-Clamp that we’ll talk about more when we talk about stability. This C-Clamp is capable of locking onto a desk as thin as 0.39” and as thick as 3.15”. If you use the included grommet, you can get that all the way out to 3.35” making it perfect for a butcher block style desk. Once mounted, that arm can swivel a full 360 degrees, meaning you can flip a monitor around when needed – handy for a video production space, as I’ve found. The second stage of the arm can also rotate a full 360 degrees (the gas arm just needs to be raised to get the monitor out of the way), giving you the ability to truly place the monitor where you want it. The VESA mount (both 75×75 and 100x100mm are supported) at the end then allows the monitor to rotate a full 180 degrees, allowing you to flip a monitor vertically easily. This is great for coding or web surfing – if you’ve never tried it, I highly recommend it.

One of the things I appreciated about this model over my previous one was the placement of the tension adjustment. My older model has the tensioner tucked to the side of the arm, whereas this version has it up top with a handy + and – symbol and a rotation arrow to show you exactly how to increase or decrease the tension on the arm.

Once you’ve got the tension where you want it, the final adjustment is the tilt. This monitor can tilt until it impacts the monitor – from +60 degrees to -15 degrees back and forward, respectively. If you needed to mount a monitor on your ceiling where you could watch TV while lying down, I guess that’d do the trick. Jokes aside, it means you can adjust it easily to an optimal viewing angle when you’re standing or sitting. At full extension it’ll hold a monitor a full 18.5” high, and at an arm’s length of 22.5” away. The company makes sit/stand desks as well, so it’s not a huge surprise that they thought of the ergonomics here.

Speaking of little details, also included in the box is a blue USB-A extension cable. Underneath the arms, you’ll find a small cable trough to carry power and connectivity down the arms without having to use velcro strips. There is a small decorative plate to then run the cables down the C-Clamp and towards your PC, just tidying things up that much more. This ties directly to the USB 3.0 port on the base, allowing you to again clean up your space by offering a charging or data port without having cables snaking to a hub or angling over the top of the desk to reach your PC.

One of the reasons you buy a monitor mount is that space on your desk is at a premium. As such, I really like the way that this stand is able to be mounted further away from where the monitor sits, and without any wobbling. I expected pulling the mount close to the wall and leaving the monitor hanging at the other end would have caused instability, but surprisingly it does not, sitting flush with the wall and preserving desk space in the process. Why is it able to hold things in such a sturdy manner? Put simply – better design.

The clamp that holds the mount to the desk for most monitor mounts is a single post in a C-clamp. This model instead employs two attach points inside that same housing, ensuring this thing does not move unless you want it to. Most monitors rely on a set screw and a small tension spring to prevent the arms from moving. This Huanuo model uses some massive double springs to ensure the angle you set is where it stays. Most other mounts have a simple tray that attaches to the bottom, little better than a plastic clip. This Huanuo uses a tray that is tightly integrated with the rest of the arm, giving it a very sleek and clean look if you have a desk with an open back. It’s a lot of simple innovations (or at least they’re making it look simple), and I’m sure it’s cutting deep on manufacturing costs, but the results speak for themselves. The design on this mount is, in a word, flawless.

With hardware, we always stop at price and warranty last. The price on this mount (Black Friday pricing notwithstanding) is $99. Sure, you can get the cheaper monitor mounts I’ve described above for around $40, and even Huanuo sells a few at that price point that can lift a smaller and lighter monitor, but for larger screens, you’ll need the extra capability. The part that blew me away was, unlike their competitors who offer either a 90 day or a 1 year warranty, Huanuo guarantees their mounts will work for five years! Suddenly that price is looking a lot more attractive.

With all of the capabilities of this mount, combined with the price and warranty, Huanuo is officially our go-to mount recommendation. Look no further – this is the one you want.

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